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TV audio for radio
Hello,
My production company was hired by a marketing company to produce some TV and radio spots for a client. The content of the TV and radio was the same. The marketing company was concerned about budget, so they asked us to pull the audio from the TV spots and use it in the radio spots (instead of recording radio-specific spots in a radio environment). Since the radio spots are 60 seconds instead of 30 (like the TV), the rest of the time was filled with a professional radio announcer. Of course, the on-location sound from the TV spots (recorded with an overhead boom in a large showroom) sounds very different from the radio annoucer’s voiceover (recorded in a sound studio with a radio microphone). Needless to say, the client is now complaining that the on-location sound “sounds like the talent is in a bathroom” compared to the annoucer’s voiceover. I told the client that it’s unlikely to get the two to sound the same. To be honest, I’ve never heard of anyone using on-location TV commercial audio for use in a radio spot. However, is there any method of EQing the sound that would make them sound less different? I have Adobe Audition and Soundbooth for such projects. I am definately more of a video guy than a sound specialist. The marketing guy needs this ASAP, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Aaron Cadieux
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4 Replies
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Do you just have a mix for the TV spot? No split tracks? Then no, you won’t be able to do anything with the sound of that VO. If you have split tracks, then you might be able to use De-Verb to reduce the room sound on the voice mic track. It’s hit or miss. You can get a demo of that plugin here. Otherwise, if you have the splits, I would just re-record the VO in a booth to match the rest of it, not the other way around. That’s your options, as I see them, and you can present it to the client that way. You are right that it is unlikely to get both of those sound recordings to sound the same – I have enough difficulty trying to match different mics recorded in the same booth…
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A professional audio-designer can fix a lot. But it’s not possible to eliminate the ambient sound (reverb, reflections, echos, etc.). But to make the best out of the original recordings I would recommend another plattform (logic, protools,… with highclass plugins).
Cheers
Thomas.https://www.footage-online.de – RED footage and more available in HD, SD and RED RAW R3D
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Now you know why it is uncommon to use video/cine production audio for radio spots. The audience accepts some amount of “room tone” as part of the complete audible/visual experience when experiencing picture and sound together. But sound by itself, AND ESPECIALLY short commercial spots (adverts) are expected to be well produced to high production standards, or they come off as “amateurish” and lack credibility. Even your client immediately recognizes that. Turn that reaction back at him.
Others have suggested that there may be some limited amount of remediation you could to to make them sound a little better. But I would bet you a nice dinner that even if you find a high-end audio production resource to work on the files, it would end up being cheaper, faster, AND better) to just do a special session to record the dialog in a studio-like space and edit the radio spots.
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Yes, there is a way to make them sound less different, but it would involve bringing the studio/booth audio “down” to the location audio. In other words, you could EQ and add the appropriate “room” reflections to the booth audio to make it match the location audio, but the other way around is nigh upon impossible. Unfortunately, you do NOT want to do that with radio. I did something similar a couple of years ago, when a client hired me to fix a scene in a corporate video. There were two actors on screen but one of the wireless lavs didn’t get recorded, so the dialogue was recorded on only one actor’s mic. To make matters worse it was in a very reflective foyer of a house. I was asked to make the dialogue match. So instead of trying to make the off axis dialogue sound better (ie, trying to remove room reflection), I made the on axis dialogue sound less direct (by adding room reflections from a reverb plug-in and some subtractive EQ). The result was a track that matched but sounded like it was recorded by an overhead boom. The client wasn’t pleased with the result because they figured that since I was an audio professional that I could make the crap sound like gold. Sometimes you just can’t win.
Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer
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